


These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

by Istezada



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: "Our Side" takes work, Dom!Crowley, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Grooming, I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS, If these boys would just talk to each other..., M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wingfic, a snack-pack of feels, apparently obligatory wing-fic, but I am rather delighted, dom!Aziraphale, most of which I did not expect, neither of them will tolerate the other in pain, philosophical musings on the difference between angels and demons, we would have nothing to write about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-07-12 03:50:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19939759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: The first time, Crowley will tell anyone listening (which is no one, with the possible exception of one angel, because there is absolutely no one in existence he’d tell), was Aziraphale’s fault.The second time, Aziraphale will tell anyone listening, was Crowley’s.





	1. Voices Singing Out of Empty Cisterns and Exhausted Wells

**Author's Note:**

> Titles are all from _The Waste Land_ , by T. S. Eliot

Aziraphale contentedly wiped his lips (and nose) with his napkin. He had his favorite restaurants around the world (and wineries and diners and things too old and sure of themselves to be anything other than pubs and _really_ there were some regions that just produced better mangoes than others) and, once he discovered a new one, he tended to patronize them faithfully until the quality dropped off.

(It was honestly gratifying how long it could take for the quality to drop off, with an angel frequenting an establishment.)

That being said, after a bit over six thousand years, he wasn’t as… adventurous… as he used to be. Oh, he’d _try_ anything, but he rarely went looking for new things these days. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t really a problem, because Crowley’s only constants (as far as the angel could tell) were snark, carefully hidden terror, Aziraphale himself, and, for the last century or so, the Bentley. Once upon a time, Aziraphale had introduced Crowley to the concept of eating oysters. Now… well… 

He smiled at Crowley across the table (mysteriously cleaner than the surrounding ones) in a tiny, ramshackle building somewhere in India. He was pretty sure it was India. He hadn’t been in the area for centuries and the young woman who appeared to run the place didn’t speak a dialect with which he was familiar. She did seem intriguingly familiar with, and deferential to, Crowley, however, and she used the most delicious and eye-watering combination of spices he’d experienced in decades.

He would _definitely_ be coming back.

“That,” he sighed, “was exquisite. Thank you, Crowley.”

The demon twitched a habitual, halfhearted grimace for his thanks, but then grinned. “She's good, right? Knew you’d like it.”

“However did you find this place?”

Crowley waved one languid hand, while pinching up another mouthful of food with the other. “Knew her… grandparents? great-grandparents?… people, a few years back. Pop in to see how they’re getting on, now and again. …Because they’re blessed good cooks,” he growled, without looking up.

Aziraphale pressed his lips more firmly together and did not beam at his not-so-terrible demon. Certainly not. It would hardly be courteous, after Crowley went to the trouble of taking him to lunch. He rearranged his napkin in his lap instead and then winced for a twinge in his left wing.

Reincorporating into a new body always came with a few discomforts and, except in cases of extreme urgency, there was traditionally a grace period allowed at the head office to give a celestial being some time to get acquainted with having flesh again. The edges between Human and Angel could be a little… they could chafe, for lack of a better word, and Aziraphale _always_ needed some time in the Aviary, tending his wings and having them groomed.

Adam was a good boy, startlingly so given his previous parentage, but he’d still been an eleven year old with more interest in, and knowledge of, Atlantis than the intricacies of angelic existences on Earth. Aziraphale didn’t blame him for that and he was very grateful to have a body again. (Possession just wasn’t the same, no matter how lovely a person Madam Tracy was.) But, after the head office’s reaction to the lack of Armageddon, he hadn’t much fancied a trip up to the Aviary.

That had been two years ago.

Mostly the edges had worn smooth and comfortable again, but his wings… well… it wasn’t as if he used them very often. They just complained every once in a while. And he kept _meaning_ to do something about them, but…

“Angel.”

He looked up and discovered Crowley’s shaded eyes staring at his left hand, which was clenched around his napkin. Aziraphale loosened it and smoothed the napkin across his thigh.

“Yes, my dear?” He had, he mused, become quite adept at hiding his thoughts behind a sort of courteous affection. He’d had a few thousand years to practice, after all. That this worked for physical (metaphysical?) discomfort as well as emotional discomfort was exceedingly handy at times.

“I just said that I like eating kittens in my stir-fry,” Crowley said, one eyebrow quirking, “to balance the flavor of politicians’ nuts. Care to comment?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Really, Crowley,” he retorted, “that’s disappointingly unoriginal, for you.”

Crowley snorted, but his face (and focus) didn’t relax in the slightest. “What’s wrong?”

The angel opened his mouth to dismiss the concern. Really, he was fine. He’d be fine. It was just a little discomfort.

But this new Arrangement, this “our side” business, was still so delicate and filled with hidden sharpnesses and, really, he didn’t like lying to Crowley, not about anything as unimportant (as vital) as his _wings_.

“My wing twinged,” he admitted, carefully offering exactly the truth and nothing more. He wasn’t sure what more _to_ offer.

Behind his sunglasses, Crowley’s head tipped down to look at Aziraphale’s (now perfectly relaxed) left hand and then back up to study the angel’s expression. “That bad?”

The problem with Crowley was that he’d known Aziraphale for those few thousands of years while he learned to control his voice, and the demon could read his facial expressions (usually) like a folio of Shakespeare. (“All the dick jokes get hidden behind modern misconceptions of historical language and behavior,” said Crowley. He wasn’t entirely inaccurate, either in regard to Shakespeare or to Aziraphale.) 

“It’s not...”

Crowley plucked the napkin out of his lap and flicked it open, revealing the ragged holes singed through the fabric where his fingertips had been a moment before. Aziraphale rolled his eyes and waved the burns away.

“Really, Crowley, it’s… I’m not going to burn down your favorite Indian restaurant just because I need to preen.”

The demon’s lips tightened and, with a disorienting snap of his fingers, he transported them— _just_ the two of them, leaving behind the table, the remnants of the meal, and their (undoubtedly) very startled hostess—to his flat.

Transport via Infernal miracles always stung a little and Azriaphale couldn’t quite stifle his hiss when he landed on Crowley’s sofa (polite thing, shifting over several feet from its usual position to catch him like that). “Well, _that_ was unnecessary,” he wheezed, sitting up properly and (also unnecessarily) straightening his bow-tie.

Crowley pulled off his sunglasses, folded them closed, and set them, carefully, on an ornate end table. “S’it big enough in here?” he demanded, without looking at the angel.

Aziraphale blinked. “For what, dear boy?”

The demon’s head turned, slowly, and he glared, all molten gold and inexplicable irritation. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen your wings, angel,” he snapped, “and that wasn’t exactly on this plane of existence. Will they fit in here?”

Inescapably, the memory of the Sands and Crowley’s massive, desperate display of power made him smile and the itch between his shoulder blades (no, the other ones) faded. “I suppose so,” he said, looking around the room. “I haven’t materialized them on Earth since the Garden. Humans tend to be… taken aback… by them.”

“Angel,” Crowley said, his voice hard and cold and very, very patient, “there’s no humans in this flat.”

“You’re angry,” Aziraphale observed and attempted to ignore the twist in his guts.

“Oh for Sssss...” The demon ground the name away into a hiss and gestured, firmly, at the kitchen table that was now in the middle of the living room floor and trying not to be confused about it. (The table, not the demon. Crowley, presumably, knew why he was angry and rearranging his furniture.) “Would you stand up and let me have a look at them?”

“What’s the table for?”

“In case you need something to hold onto.”

Aziraphale eyed the table warily. “Did you at least pay your friend for our lunch?”

“Angel. She’s fine. She’s paid. She loves us. She’s going to name her next goat after us. Get. Up.”

Bemused, Aziraphale rose and went to the table. Behind him, he heard Crowley push to his feet and follow him.

“Coat on or off?” Crowley asked.

The itch returned and Aziraphale felt his entire back shiver. “Why,” he complained, “do I feel like a school-boy about to be caned?”

There was a pause and then the demon _laughed_ , the sound so soft and genuine, and leaned his forehead against the base of Aziraphale’s neck. “Dunno, angel. Never been a school-boy.” He straightened, his voice gentler now but no less demanding. (Demanding?) “How long’s this been going on?”

“Yes, well. I can’t quite imagine you in a uniform,” Aziraphale retorted, while shrugging out of his coat. “And… since Adam.” Why, exactly, the admission left gooseflesh prickling down his limbs, he didn’t know.

“Since...” Crowley stepped away, feet clicking precisely on the floor. “Wings out,” he ordered.

And Aziraphale obeyed. His wings unfolded—from refracted light and wind to tangled feathers, from air and divine grace to heavy, aching physicality—and stretched, brushing against the walls on either side of him.

And he stood there, one hand worrying the ring on his pinkie, and tried to ignore the instincts that _screamed_ at him about the demon behind him, within reach of his wings, within reach of…

“ _What_ ,” said an icy and wholly unimpressed voice, “in the name of anything or anyone you’d care to use, were you _thinking_ , Aziraphale? Do you know what these _look_ like?”

Aziraphale’s spine flinched even straighter, his hands fell to his sides, and his wings fluttered momentarily as he resisted the impulse to tuck them against himself, before they stilled, remaining where they were, extended for inspection. “Yes, Radiant,” he said automatically, staring at the wall in front of him. “No excuse, Radiant.” 

When had the stark, but comfortable, lines of Crowley’s flat become the pristine, sterile emptiness of the head office? What…?

It wasn’t until the snarl ripped the air apart behind him, rustling his feathers and doubtless sending the garden room into a month-long panic, that he realized who the voice had belonged to and what he’d just said.

By the time he whirled around, apologies tumbling over his lips and tripping between his teeth, Crowley was gone.


	2. The Awful Daring of a Moment’s Surrender

Two months passed before Crowley pushed open the angel’s door and ignored the automatic “I’m afraid we’re closed,” call from around the shelf of travelogues (which were first divided by whether or not the volume included illustrations, and then, within those two categories, organized chronologically, by region, and _then_ by author’s surname—but referenced, always and regardless of imagerial inclusions, by author’s given name) to weave his way through the familiar clutter and lean one hip against the ragged sofa.

“Yo, angel,” he said.

The sheer relief on Aziraphale’s face stabbed like the touch of consecrated ground and he braced himself for whatever was going to come out of the angel’s mouth.

But then Aziraphale’s teeth clicked together as he inhaled deeply through his nose and, apparently, reconsidered. “I was just going to pour some wine,” he said instead. “Would you like some?”

Wine sounded like a _brilliant_ idea. Some of the ancient Scotch he knew Aziraphale had in his back room sounded even better (which was why he’d been in Kentucky drinking bourbon for the past few weeks). But… “Nah,” he said and watched the pain and worry and fear clench in the corners of the angel’s eyes and lips. It felt a little like vengeance and a little like justice and a lot like the gaping, screaming pit in his stomach that had torn open at the last thing the angel said to him.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. For several seconds, he stared up at Crowley and, very obviously, looked for something to say. Finally, he just placed a bookmark in the volume he’d been reading, closed it, and set it aside. When he looked up again, his expression was (mostly) smoothed into the fond neutrality that usually existed there.

“How are the wings?” Crowley asked and (mostly) managed to sound calm about it. ‘Radiant’ the angel’d said. Like a carefully programmed robot. Like he was reporting. Like he was used to reporting like _that_. Like Crowley was still one of _those_. Like he’d answered to that blessed fucking word since the moment he stepped over the Edge.

Aziraphale winced (guilt, this time, to add to the other emotions) and dropped his gaze. “Better,” he said to a nearby display. “I’ve been working on them. Thank you for asking.”

“Uh huh.” Crowley pushed off the sofa and took a long step (thus the advantages of having sensibly sized legs) to clear the corner, before dropping to sit on the far end from the angel. Aziraphale stiffened and Crowley studied his profile in silence.

Over the last six thousand years, they’d learned, when Humanity and Heaven and Hell got to be too much for them (and beyond the carefully nebulous bounds of the Arrangement), that Crowley enjoyed doing as Aziraphale told him (on occasion, with small kindnesses, and rarely in public), and that Aziraphale enjoyed following Crowley’s directions (on occasion, with tiny wickedness, and _frequently_ in public). Aziraphale, mostly, remembered not to compliment the demon and Crowley, mostly, remembered not to blatantly admire the angel’s talent for temptation. Occasionally— _very_ occasionally—they’d both needed to go against the grain and stretch beyond the bounds of their lives and who else, really, could they have trusted to understand that?

A few times, during the eleven years when they thought they were raising the Antichrist, there had been moments (evenings) of… something else. Sullenly obeying “Make me a cup of tea, won’t you, Crowley? You know how I like it.” hummed with electric shame and (when he needed it) he adored it. Being pinned to the wall of Brother Francis’ cottage by sheer divine power and being _kept_ there, on the edge of dis-corporation or death, until he admitted that he couldn’t escape, and then docilely accepting (reveling in) Aziraphale’s ministrations thereafter… was something else entirely. They’d never _quite_ talked about it, but he suspected it was the same for the angel and the things he’d done to him. Of all the unfathomably powerful and uncontrollable things they’d been attempting to control during those eleven years, at least _they_ had been understandable and controllable.

Never once, in _any_ of that time, had Aziraphale called him anything other than variations on “Crowley” or “my dear”. Never once, not on the Garden wall and not at the (very nearly) end of everything in Tadfield, had Aziraphale even hinted that he knew who Crowley’d been before, or done more than awkwardly reference the Fall and the fact that, technically, they’d once been made of the same stuff.

“Why?” he asked, finally.

Aziraphale exhaled like a slashed tire and turned to look at him. So earnest. So agonized. “Crowley, my dear, I’m so sorry. I...”

“Know that,” he interrupted. “ _Why_?” (He’d never got used to Human children, always asking that question, always being answered or ignored or beaten for their inquisitiveness. He hadn’t known the first two were options, before Cain and Abel and Seth.) He couldn’t quite bury the frisson of terror, fresh and new every blessed time, that ran through him whenever he said the word.

The angel’s mouth snapped shut, again, and he looked down at his hands, fidgeting that ring of his around and around. “Heaven… changed, after,” he said slowly. “That’s why the head office—why it was made, I mean. For us, anyway. No one w… No one could quite bear to be there—Home—for a while. So they… we made the head office and we practiced making human shapes out of ourselves. To be better at it on Earth assignment, I suppose, but also just for… just to be different. To be something else. I’ve been _here_ for… most of it, but I don’t know if anyone’s really gone Home or been _themselves_ since then.”

Crowley’s stomach twisted. The idea of Heaven, echoing and empty. The idea of the _entire_ Host hiding like that. The idea of _Aziraphale_ hiding like that. The idea of being trapped in a single form, however familiar, because he couldn’t nip back to Hell and relax (okay, no, no one ever _relaxed_ in Hell) in the heat and stench and freedom of his own mutilated form instead of the gangling Human shape he’d been sporting for six millennia.

“The wings are,” Aziraphale continued, his voice so quiet that it barely broke the silence of his shop, “really the last bit left. So there’s the Aviary. It’s not Home, but it’s a place where we’re allowed to fly and...”

“And yell at each other about the state of your wings?” Crowley asked, after the angel trailed off and didn’t continue.

The angel’s lips twitched. “Angels are very shouty,” he answered. “You may have noticed.”

Crowley slouched against the back of the couch. “The fact may have come to my attention once or twice. I didn’t mean to re… That’s not what I...”

“We don’t…" Aziraphale twitched uncomfortably and tried that sentence again. "Each other, I mean. Humans are supposed to be guided and loved and comforted and all that. All of that is for, is supposed to be for... for Her. For humans. We don’t… we’re not very good at that anymore, between each other.”

The contempt and dismissal in Gabriel’s purple eyes, in the (so subtle) sneer of Uriel’s mouth, in Sandlephon’s very posture was, apparently, as unexpected and unfamiliar to him as it would have been anticipated and accepted by his angel. Crowley’s throat buzzed with a silent growl. And everyone was so sure that there was a _difference_ between the head offices and their occupants.

“I didn’t… I just _forgot_ , for a moment, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “I hadn’t had my wings out anywhere but the Aviary since the Garden.”

Crowley nodded and then reached over and laid a hand under Aziraphale’s chin, forcing the angel’s face around to look at him. “Did you forget where you were or where I wasn’t?” he asked, and refused to stop breathing while he waited for the answer.

The angel, in response, paled further than Crowley’d seen since 1862 when he’d ask for holy water. “Y…” He took a breath and Crowley could _feel_ his spine stiffening again, though he made no move to pull out of the demon’s grip. “If you’re asking if I remember you from before, the answer is yes,” he said, his words and diction again as precise and steady as if he were reading a census. “I’ve never called you by that name and I never will. You’re Crowley.”

“You said ‘Radiant’,” Crowley whispered, watching the blue eyes intently (desperately?) for the tiniest flicker of concealment.

“I did,” Aziraphale answered. “I’m sorry. Everything got very muddled for a moment. My wings were out, on Earth, with me flat on the ground, with no room to take off, with a demon right behind me, and then you just… I _knew_ they were in a state and you were so angry and I didn’t know why, even before I opened them.”

Crowley tried to absorb that. He hadn't understood why Crowley'd been angry. He'd... 

“You stood there, with your wings out and on the verge of flightless even if you _had_ been outside, with an angry demon at your back… on purpose?”

Azriaphale blinked, apparently ( _somehow_ ) not understanding the question.

“ _Why_?” Crowley demanded, baffled.

Against his fingertips, the angel smiled. “It was you,” he said simply, as if anything about that statement and implication was simple.

Crowley stared.

“I used to command you, angel,” he said softly.

“You still do, from time to time.”

Crowley almost gagged. “Not like that. _Never_ like that. Not again. I…” He licked his lips, tasting the air of the bookshop and angel’s scent and completely failing to find anything that he had not already known was there.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, reaching up to curl one hand against Crowley’s on his jaw, “you have never in six thousand years commanded me like that."

“You said I went...”

“… too fast for me,” the angel finished with him. “You do _push_ , my dear. And tempt. And wheedle. And snarl. And hiss. And sulk. And...”

“Aziraphale!”

“But you’ve never,” he concluded, “ _commanded_. Not when I didn’t want it.”

Every broiling holy scrap of air around the angel tasted of honesty, of truth, and pure, sheer conviction. Crowley sucked in a breath, roasting his lungs with it, savoring the blistering sincerity.

“Do you?” he asked, eyes sliding closed as if the angel was radiating light, instead of just honesty.

“Sometimes,” Aziraphale answered.

Crowley’s eyes snapped open again. The angel’s voice was as calm and unwavering as ever, but there was the faintest whiff of… something else… in his scent and his eyes crinkled as if he could see Crowley’s through his sunglasses.

Speaking of which…

He released the angel’s chin and sat back, hooked off his glasses, and tossed them carelessly down atop the angel’s book (Volume 2 of _Turkmen Dastarkhan_ , according to the spine). Something in Aziraphale’s shoulders relaxed as he did so and Crowley... smiled.

Aziraphale’s shoulders _stopped_ relaxing.

“How _are_ the wings, angel?” he asked a second time and watched the angel’s next inhale hitch.

“Better,” he replied, blue eyes meeting his own so casually, as if Crowley couldn’t see the delight and impudence (and tenderness) in his gaze “I’ve been working on them. Thank you for asking.”

“Uh huh,” Crowley repeated, increasing the skepticism in his voice by several orders of magnitude. (Aziraphale _squirmed_.) “That’s very diligent of you, angel. But given the state they were in _last_ time, you’ll...” he rolled the next word around his mouth for a moment, making the angel wait for it, “… forgive me, if I don’t take your word for it.”

Aziraphale flinched for that word, hands clasping tightly together across his stomach. He swallowed, the muscles contracting down his throat, and Crowley grinned, all sharp teeth and golden eyes.

“Well,” said the angel, “perhaps you’d better see for yourself then.”

He stood. Crowley’s eyebrows went up. Aziraphale’s wings had filled his living room. They’d toss the bookshop’s crannies into complete disorder.

But then Aziraphale offered his hand, as if they’d got tired of feeding the ducks and decided to go for ice cream, and Crowley took it and followed the angel upstairs, through the well-used kitchen, past the sitting room that was mostly an extension of the shop below (it was where Aziraphale kept the books that he didn’t pretend were for sale—Nutter was in there somewhere), and into the mostly disused bedroom. It was, technically, a bedroom. There was, technically, a bed in it. The bed even had bedding on it, a concession by the angel for the times when Crowley napped there. Crowley’d come to the conclusion, decades ago, that the closet—full of laughably out-of-date clothing and mementos—was the only thing that Aziraphale actually used in the room.

With a twitch of his head, the angel rearranged a few walls (or at least the space between them) to give them enough room.

“Very thoughtful,” Crowley drawled and then had to taste the air for the bashful smile that flickered across the other’s face.

“Stop it!” complained Aziraphale. “Stop _sniffing_ me. You’re not a dog.”

Crowley actually gaped momentarily, tongue jerking back between his teeth. “Angel,” he said, recovering himself, “if you’re going to take off your coat, I suggest you do so. Now.”

Aziraphale eyed him thoughtfully for long enough that the demon raised one hand, fingers pressed together to snap. If they both attempted to miracle the coat, in directly contradicting manners, Crowley honestly had no idea what would happen to the garment, but he was suddenly curious to find out. They’d have to test it, one day. (Possibly not with the _coat_. That would probably be a bad idea.)

The angel sighed and shrugged out of his coat. He took two step towards the closet and Crowley _did_ snap his fingers, leaving the coat (and Aziraphale’s waistcoat, but not the bow-tie) settled primly on the empty hangers that waited for them.

Aziraphale whirled back around, glaring, and Crowley closed the distance between them and grabbed the angel’s face again before he could dodge out of the way. (He was a snake, after all. Regardless of the number of limbs he currently possessed, he could still move like one.) Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Aziraphale wave away the slick stickiness of perspiration that came of dressing in 19th century layers in 21st century London. The shirt was as clean and crisp as if he’d just finished ironing it. Crowley did not roll his eyes.

“Wings,” he hissed, drawing out that sibilant unnecessarily, pulling Aziraphale’s nose almost to his own, “out.”

Aziraphale obeyed. Behind him, white wings unfurled into the room. His eyes never left the demon’s.

“Where are you?” Crowley asked. He had to ask. He couldn’t hear that word aimed at him again.

“Here,” the angel answered promptly, steadily. “In my flat. Above my bookshop. I’m here, Crowley.”

Crowley allowed them both a breath, a single breath, of relief and acceptance before he pushed the angel’s jaw (and, by extension, the angel) away. “Stay,” he ordered, hissing again, and began a thorough inspection of Aziraphale’s wings.

They _were_ in better shape than they had been. He hadn’t lied about that (not that Crowley actually thought he had done), but given their starting point… 

Still. He made a point of stroking his fingers through feathers that had been preened into their proper places and listened to his angel’s breath stutter. After he’d made note of the improvements on the inner surfaces, Crowley ducked under one wing and prowled behind Aziraphale, taking in the condition of the wings’ upper surfaces.

It was much the same there. Progress had definitely been made, but grooming wings as large as Angelic (or Demonic) wings by oneself was difficult, to say the least, and Aziraphale had never had to practice before.

Finally, he stopped and settled one hand directly between all four of the angel’s shoulders. “You do realize that you’d be the laughing stock of Heaven _and_ Hell if anyone knew what these looked like, right, Aziraphale?”

The wings quivered, as if they wanted to droop, and then stilled. “Yes,” Aziraphale answered, “sir.”

Crowley froze, staring at the back of the angel’s head.

“What?”

Aziraphale looked over his shoulders at him and Crowley almost staggered at the combination of vulnerability and concern (and open, blatant acknowledgment of both) in the angel’s eyes. “Crowley?” he asked softly.

In defiance of the angel’s earlier indignation, the demon leaned forward and flicked his tongue, snake-fast, along Aziraphale’s skin, curling up, barely touching, the edge of his ear. Smell was one thing. Taste, especially _that_ … Aziraphale, in response, sucked in a breath between his teeth and looked away.

A foot gently pushed the back of a knee, a hand pressed against a patagium, another hand tangled into those absurdly soft curls, and Crowley found himself standing over a kneeling angel. The shimmering wings were extended all around them, spread across the floor and so _blessed_ exposed. With a step, a single step, he could be walking on angel wings and Aziraphale didn’t even flinch.

“We’ll get you sorted,” he promised. “I know you tried, angel, but you’ve had two months and I can’t deal with this any longer.”

Aziraphale, of all people, took a turn licking his lips and nodded, the motion jerking against Crowley's hand snarled in his hair.

“Are you going to be good for me?” Crowley murmured, like it wasn’t the most ridiculous question to ask an angel—to ask _this_ angel—and plucked a dangling, broken feather from one wing and discarded it.

It had barely been attached but the angel shuddered anyway. “Yes, sir,” he said, voice hoarse and (for this moment in time) as unguarded as his wings. “ _Please_.”

Crowley could, he decided, cope with “sir”.


	3. What Branches Grow Out of This Stony Rubbish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With sincere apologies to Austen.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that demons are incapable of either experiencing or sensing love.

It is a universal truth of complete bollocks.

Crowley knew that. Crowley had _always_ known that.

It is also a truth universally acknowledged that (regardless of their indescribably terrifying appearances when not in human form) angels are designed and created to worship, serve, and love. For an angel, there is no difference between the three verbs. They are all aspects of the singular, on-going act of existence; an angel could no more untangle and separate them than a human could survive having their blood replaced with molten gold.

It is a universal truth of complete, incontrovertible _fact_.

Crowley knew that. Crowley had _always_ known that.

Crowley had been an angel, once. He’d lived the thrumming, unspeakable perfection of worship and love and service to the Being that created him and of Her acceptance and appreciation of that perfection and the echoing feedback of Her love in return.

He remembered it. He remembered _losing_ it.

Angels called it Falling. Humans followed their lead. Victors write the history books, after all.

Heaven was imagined on fluffy clouds, full of fluffy angels playing fluffy harps. (Crowley was honestly rather proud of that piece of nonsense.) Hell, therefore, was imagined as the opposite, bowels of scalpel-edged rocks, full of spine-covered demons playing footie with human heads.

(Contrary to popular opinion, dog-fights were much more popular in Hell. Football required _teamwork_. Also, human heads are extremely asymmetrical.)

Heaven above. Hell below. Falling was, therefore, the logical means of being expelled from the first to the second. Obviously. That's how gravity worked. (Never mind that physics—and gravity—didn't work the same way in metaphysical and extra-dimensional space.) The demons Fell from Heaven to Hell. Obviously.

Demons called it Falling because it was easier than trying to _describe_ it. Not that there was anyone to describe it to. All the demons had experienced it. _None_ of the demons talked about it. Not to each other.

But it hadn’t been a descent. (It had, and it hadn’t. It was complicated. Not in fact. Not to experience. The event itself had been very simple indeed. But to put words to…?)

It wasn’t a descent. It had never been a descent. He didn’t _Fall_. None of them had.

It was a surgery. A tomb. An unbreachable fortification instantaneously installed around the core of him.

Crowley (or, rather, the being he’d been at the time) had simply ceased to exist by every definition he’d ever known. He was, had been, a being of love, of service and devotion. And suddenly—like a bank vault locking shut, like the sound of footsteps walking away from an oubliette, like the saw of an amputating surgeon—like an avalanche, a volcano, a tsunami irrevocably changing the shape of the Earth itself—everything was different. Everything was gone. _She_ was gone.

(She was still there. So was the love. So was everything he’d ever been. But that door was shut. The connection was broken. The feedback loop of inenarrable light and music and harmony was thrown into shadows and dissonance. The feather-soft chains of devotion snapped and left him tumbling with no guidance, no foundation, no nothing. The silk-smooth cycle of love to and from his Creator, that he’d both never noticed and in which he had inescapably basked, was bent into something with jagged edges, featureless blockades, and absolutely no way out or back in.)

No outlet. No recipient. He was everything She’d created him to be (he was wholly unlike anything She’d created him to be) and he couldn’t reach Her. She spurned his shattered imperfection, because there was no place for it in Her Presence.

He knew that. He understood that. It was as logical and reasonable as any conclusion made by a Vulcan (the aliens, not the god). 

He _hated_ it.

Tradition, really. Some human, sometime recently, had said “Grief is just love with no place to go” and, for humans, she was pretty blessed spot-on. The problem arose when a host of immortal beings applied that reality to everything and to the One they’d lost, and then had to exist there. For eternity.

Just because the door was shut didn't mean that they stopped loving what they were forever sealed away from.

There was no healing from that loss. There was no numbing gained by the passage of the millennia. It just was, like the color of the sky and the inevitability of human stupidity and ingenuity.

Most demons wallowed in the pain. It was easier (except it wasn't) to just surrender to it. It was easier (except it wasn’t) to aim all their baffled, stymied devotion and burgeoning rage at Her little humans, at the tiny, fragile, bi-pedal things that were, apparently, made in Her image and likeness. (It’d taken Crowley a while to figure that one out. It’s not like She had limbs, the last time he saw Her.) Humans could be toyed with, tempted, manipulated, and controlled (to a point, only ever to a point) in ways that were fascinating, sickening, and deeply satisfying.

Most demons aimed their attentions there. Most demons were content to distract themselves with the humans. (No demon was _content_. Ever. But no demon would ever admit to resignation either. Not even Crowley. It hurt too much.)

Crowley was… lucky? Do angels (or demons) believe in luck? Crowley was unfathomably _un_ lucky.

Crowley was stubborn, stupid, and staggeringly sunk.

He’d found his angel. His angel, who knew all the universal truths (true or otherwise) and accepted them and, with blithe, ridiculous, _airy_ determination, tempted him to discover oysters anyway. His angel, who’d known him since before Eden, who’d fought in and survived the War, and who had allowed a demon to orbit him—within knife-point’s reach, within striking distance of his fangs—for over six _thousand_ fucking years.

Crowley wanted to scream. He wanted to hop in the Bentley and drive to Scotland or Pluto or Alpha Centauri. He seriously considered making a swan-dive directly into the sun.

Crowley sat on his throne and stared at the feathers—ruffled, bent, and broken—in his lap. Even in their less than perfect state, they glistened. They shone. He more than half expected them to sear his fingers when he touched them. They didn’t. They hadn’t. He’d collected them (stolen them) from Aziraphale weeks ago after the angel let him sort his wings and they hadn’t done so much as emit unnatural warmth.

If it hadn’t been for their color—a color that humans would never be able to put into words and that Crowley could only define as “Aziraphale’s”—anyone might have mistaken them for normal feathers from some normal (if large) bird from this very normal planet. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d, personally, groomed them from the Principality’s wings.

(They hadn’t burned him then, either.)

Being wrist-deep in the plumage of an angel was not a place that Crowley had ever expected to be. Not again. No sane, self-respecting angel would let a demon touch their wings. No sane, self-respecting demon would pass up the opportunity to do more than _groom_.

And no, he hadn’t been particularly sane for… a long time. And Aziraphale certainly had his quirks. And okay _fine_ , he would face Heaven and Hell for (and with) his angel. And _Aziraphale_ had denied Heaven for him. And before that there had been the Arrangement, a thing of danger and amusement and convenience and sloth. And now there was just _their side_.

Their Side was nice.

Crowley snorted and picked up one downy bit that was, impossibly, even fluffier than the angel’s hair. “Nice,” he muttered.

He wasn’t _nice_. He’d never been nice, even before he stopped being an angel. (Angels, outside of the pastel idiocy of church nurseries, weren’t nice either. They weren’t designed to be.) He was a demon. He was _good_ at being a demon, no matter what the conservative nitwits in Hell thought. If they couldn’t take advantage of the irritation and wrath and fear caused by the entire mobile network of London going on the blink, that was hardly _his_ fault.

He was good at being a demon. He had been for millennia. It’s just that he also…

Crowley snarled and scooped up the feathers (carefully… gently) to stalk across the room and shove them (gently… carefully) into his safe. The feathers were impervious to his mood and went right on gleaming from the shadows.

“Sorry,” he whispered to them anyway.

And then he went out.

 _Out_ out.

A nudge and a variety of scum lost their heads in a stand-off with… lesser scum? Bodies slumped to blood-slicked concrete and dust. Did he actually give a bless about humanity today? Did he care who held the moral high ground over anyone else?

He did not. 

They were all small and dirty and made of dirt and he was both unimaginably better and laughably, unspeakably worse than any of them. He tempted, oh he tempted. And _they_ were the ones, over and over and over, who said yes, who tripped over themselves to justify the unjustifiable. Even when he sat back and watched, they invented guillotines and Inquisitions and genocide from nothing more than residual fear and a sense of injustice that they died too fast to get over.

Humanity could put him out of a job.

A hiss and Crowley stole a child from the teeth of a human dragnet, somewhere in the bowels of some continent or other, and left it in a nearby village. Let it tell tales of the giant snake that led it to safety. The humans and their war would be by again and Crowley wouldn’t be there next time.

The demon screamed to the stars (and the One) that no longer listened to him and went home.

Feathers weren’t the only thing in his safe. Under the feathers, behind the (now empty) thermos, was a file. A thick file. It was full of commendations and warnings and accolades (and one unsigned, warily treasured, note that just said “What the blessed fuck, Crawly?” that had appeared after Adam happened to Armageddon). It was full of the things that he had (and hadn’t) done over the course of his existence. Eden was in there. So were the Borgias (that whole section was about half and half, if he was honest… which he wasn’t). Imaginative bunch, the Borgias.

Crowley flung the contents of the file into the air and watched them swirl in a maelstrom of evil. He’d dabbled in all seven of the big ones, over the years, along with a crushing helping of apathy. Apathy, he thought, put sloth to shame. Sloth was a child throwing a tantrum. (“But I don’t wanna!”) Apathy was a fully functioning and capable adult taking a nap rather than lift a finger to help. (“Nah. Bugger off. I don't care.”)

A nap would be brilliant, actually. A nap had been the _plan_.

“M’gonna go take a nap, angel,” he’d said, last time he’d seen Aziraphale. “Come wake me up if I’m not back in a month or two?”

Except he hadn’t been able to bloody sleep since…

With an irritated grunt, Crowley sprawled on the table and watched his life twist above him, like a giant mobile of the damned. He watched it and watched it and did not, could not, sleep.

“I must say that’s a peculiar form of resting, even for you, my dear,” said the angel, some interminable amount of time later.

Crowley yelped and rolled to his feet, putting the table between them before he’d properly processed anything.

In the doorway, blue eyes wide and startled, stood Aziraphale, his head tilted curiously at the soft sound of paper and parchment and papyrus and things even older shushing to the floor and table (there was a clay tablet or two in the mix, they shushed gently to the floor as well).

“Heaven, angel, it’s a good thing I can’t have heart attacks,” Crowley grumbled and gestured a pair of sunglasses into his hand and then onto his face.

“Rather. I think we would have had a string of them in those last few years,” agreed the angel. There was something... Crowley didn't know what to call it... in his face, in his voice. An absolute calm that did not alter, and was not altered by, the fondness that the angel no longer bothered to disguise. Something.

And then he stepped into the room, to the nearest commendation, and picked it up.

“Don’t,” Crowley said (begged?).

Aziraphale looked at the parchment in his hands, read it (Crowley watched, shocked, as his eyes flicked across the Infernal script), nodded once, glanced back up at him, and _smiled_. “Well, I can’t very well miracle them up into a tidy bundle, my dear. I don’t think they’d appreciate it.”

And he picked up another one.

“Aziraphale...” whispered the demon.

Aziraphale ignored him. And Crowley stood there, mute and frozen in horror, and watched the angel collect the record of his, really very estimable, life as a demon and stack it carefully on the table. He didn’t attempt to organize it, which was a tiny, minuscule, staggering mercy. Other than the first parchment, he didn’t read any of them, so there was no way to put them in any sort of order except by what the communiques had been written on, but Aziraphale didn’t do even that. Every physical medium of communication used by mankind (and a few more besides) was piled according to the order in which Aziraphale picked it up.

When he was done (those clay tablets set neatly beside the stack), the angel stepped back, having worked his way around the table, and looked up at Crowley.

“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?” he asked, a question of concern instead of accusation.

Crowley gaped. Had been gaping. Was still gaping. Might go on gaping for another decade or so.

“Crowley?”

“Wh…” He shook himself. “Nah,” he said. “Things to see, people to do.”

“I see.” The corners of Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled and then smoothed. “Anything I can do to help?”

Help.

The angel wanted to…

“The _fuck_ , Aziraphale?” he grated, voice hoarse as he pointed at the file on his table.

A flicker of angelic fire in blue eyes was not a response he’d expected and, all things considered, he thought he could be f… excused… for flinching. It wasn’t every day that a Principality handled the Infernal documents that had ruled and recorded Crowley’s existence since before Adam and Eve figured out how sex worked.

“If I didn’t let _them_ take you, for torture or death, for what you’d done” said the angel, “exactly what makes you think that I will allow _you_ to torture yourself for the same thing?”

His tone was gentle. Soft. Almost, Crowley would call it a murmur. Almost, he might call it a caress. If it wasn’t for the core of Celestial steel that ran through every word.

There was a reason, the demon thought, that most angelic visitations to humans began with the words “Don’t be afraid.” Except for the light in his eyes, Aziraphale looked as old-fashioned and harmless as ever. There wasn’t a glint of divinity leaking through.

And yet…

The angel might not be _the_ most terrifying being with whom Crowley’d ever interacted. (The Almighty Herself, Lucifer, and Adam II were ahead of him on that list.) He was _definitely_ the most terrifying being with whom Crowley interacted on a regular basis. (And Crowley would, all in all, be very, very, very happy to keep it that way.)

“Wasn’t _torture_ ,” he said dismissively, as if he hadn’t just taken a step away from the angel’s wrath. “I was just remembering. Didn’t… you _touched_ them.”

Aziraphale’s head tilted to one side and his expression suddenly softened. “I’m not hurt, my dear,” he said, and this time it really was a murmur. “Here.”

In the space between them, the angel offered his hands, palms up, for Crowley to inspect. They were unmarked by their contact with Crowley’s file. Which made sense, but it was… comforting (not _nice_ ) to see for himself.

“Oh. Well. Good then. S’rude to read other people’s mail, angel.”

“Is it?” Aziraphale asked curiously. “Then I’m sorry.”

Behind his glasses, Crowley rolled his eyes. Outwardly, he stuck his hands in his pockets. “Come to check on me, then?”

“You did tell me to,” the angel pointed out. “What were you even doing, my dear?”

“Told you. Remembering.”

“Remembering what?”

Crowley stared down at him, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

Sodding Hell.

Once upon a time, back before time had been imagined and before fear existed, his glare would have sent Aziraphale scrambling. Once upon a time, a single gesture of his hand could order choirs and formations of angels. Once upon a time, the stars had listened to him, had sung under his fingertips. Once upon a time…

And now a cast-out, but unFallen, Principality was staring at him and demanding an answer and every horded, unused, useless, unwanted scrap of love and devotion in Crowley wanted to answer him and wanted to flee far, far away. (Not that fleeing would last. Aziraphale would let him go. Aziraphale always let him go, just as he always let Aziraphale go. But he’d be back. He _always_ came back. Orbits were like that.)

“Me,” he said finally. He almost growled it. (He didn’t.)

Aziraphale looked up at him for a moment longer and then looked back, over his shoulder, to the table and Crowley's commendation file.

For several seconds, for several eternities, Crowley watched the angel’s profile. He watched the thoughts and feelings flicker through the angel’s mind. He’d been watching that face, in this form, off and on, for six thousand years. He had to.

Once upon a time, before prose had been invented and when all audible conversation was sung, there would have been no need for words. Once upon a time, communication had been as flawless and effortless and beautiful as any other action they performed. Once upon a time, Aziraphale’s questions and Crowley’s answers would have been as unified as the Earth and the shadow it cast across the solar system. Once upon a time…

But that was before. Now he watched for every hint of what the angel was thinking. Because that door had closed and had never re-opened and now he was left to watch faces and eyes and body language like a human. Oh, he could sense the shifting, swirling tide of the angel’s thoughts, but he could no more swim them than a whale could walk.

Fortunately for him, Aziraphale had never been the subtlest of angels. Abject fear, absolute fury, and aching fondness swept and settled across his features.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said and his voice was so gentle, as gentle as when he spoke to homeless teens, and Crowley’s entire body went cold at the stillness of the angel’s hands, “go sit down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley references Jamie Anderson: "Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go."


	4. Yet There The Nightingale

Crowley went. He circled back to the other side of the table and lowered himself into his throne. He was a snake. He was what all other snakes were named after. Now, feeling weight of Aziraphale’s gaze between his shoulder blades and pressing inexorably against his collarbones (probably the angel was looking at his face—Crowley didn’t look up to find out), he felt more like the rabbit to Aziraphale’s cobra than he’d _ever_ care to admit.

(Of course, rabbits and cobras didn't naturally share habitats. And, endearingly, sometimes rabbits kicked snakes to death. He considered the facts, briefly, and shook the thought away.)

“Thank you.”

He glanced up and blinked (yes, he did that on occasion, when the occasion demanded it) in disbelief. Aziraphale had followed him around the table and was now _perched_ on it, wriggling back on his arse as casually as any university student. And then…

… Crowley almost _did_ have a heart attack…

… summoning the chair several inches closer, the angel set his shod feet on the crimson upholstery of Crowley’s throne, one on either side of the demon, and leaned forward, trapping Crowley against the uncomfortable velvet backing. Elbows were propped on easily spread knees and, with a gesture, the angel was suddenly holding a small and very, very old (seriously, it looked and sounded like parchment pages) book.

Crowley licked his lips. And then did it again, startled past the image of Aziraphale sitting on a table. He’d never seen that book before. He’d never tasted it on the air. It had never, to his knowledge, existed in his presence or dusted the angel’s fingers during the entire length of their association.

“Gonna… gonna read to me, angel?” he asked. (Which was possibly one of the more absurd things that had ever come out of his mouth, to include “fish stew” and "they go 'Whoop'".)

Aziraphale smiled faintly (which did absolutely nothing to dim the holy light pouring from his eyes). “I am. Are you sitting comfortably, my dear?”

“Not really, no.”

“Then I’ll begin.” The angel opened his book, smoothed a careful finger down the page, and… “Observations concerning the demon Crawly, Serpent of Eden. As noted in my previous report, the demon known as Crawly remains as elusive when hunted as he is seemingly affable when encountered.”

Crowley twitched, both for the sound of his former name and the cold, analytical language the angel used (also because the language in which the words were written hadn’t been spoken by mankind since Babel and having its syntax suddenly flood back into his brain was headache inducing).

It went _on_ like that. Stuffily (meticulously) cataloging his movements, his deeds, his conversations and interactions with Aziraphale and humanity at large (the bits that Aziraphale had witnessed or pieced together) for centuries. Pages of his comings and goings and temptations and curses and...

“I have recently discovered,” the angel read in a terrifyingly unemotional voice, “that Crawly defied the decree of the Most High and rescued a number of children from calamity and destruction in the Flood.”

Crowley, fingers whiteboned against the arms of his throne, stared at Aziraphale and tried to scoff. It was… not the best scoff he’d ever produced.

Aziraphale didn’t look up from his blessed book. But his expression and voice lightened. “Ah. There’s a note here in Italian. I added it later. It says to cross-reference with Padua. Do you know why, Crowley?”

His eyes widened. Of all the things he’d never talked to the angel about, _that_ was in his little book?

“N-no,” he said and sounded unconvincing, even to himself.

Aziraphale’s face instantly shuttered again while he flipped past pages—centuries, millennia of pages fit into that small, scuff-edged volume—to see where his note took him. “Saint Anthony of Padua. Ah yes. I didn’t make that connection until the '50s, you know. Patron saint of lost things, my dear?”

“Wasn’t _me_ ,” Crowley muttered. Upholstery crumpled behind him and he could not, by all that he had ever once held dear and holy, scratch the tight-drawn itch from his skin. “Met him once or twice though. Nice enough guy, for a Franciscan.”

“Hmm. Nice enough to take his name, centuries later?” 

Crowley got halfway through a well-practiced and dismissive snort before Aziraphale leaned abruptly closer. Angelic fingers forked, twisting in his hair, and the snort (he didn't know it was possible to interrupt a snort) stuttered to shocked silence as he stared, trapped and bloody well trembling in his throne, at the angel before him. 

“If you don’t want to reply, my boy, then don’t. But I believe I already said that I would not permit you to torture yourself. Speak or stay silent, but you will _not_ add fresh scars to your hurt by lying while I am here. Not today.” Aziraphale’s eyes were blue-white now, like lightning, and silver-sheened with unshrouded power. “Do you understand?”

Dumbly, Crowley nodded and saw the angel smile. _That_ smile. The one he was (almost) sure existed only for him.

“Good. Will you tell me why you were so fond of Saint Anthony?”

If it was truth he was after, it was all in the name, wasn’t it? “Patron saint of lost things,” he whispered, and watched that smile turn fragile. “Kinda the lostest of things, aren’t I?”

A breath. The faintest, unsteady stir of air as the angel exhaled over him.

“Thank you.” Aziraphale said, voice and fingers soft again as both curled around Crowley’s ears. For a moment he just sat there, one hand cupped around Crowley’s cheek, and watched Crowley. For a moment, Crowley just sat there and tried not to shake.

When the angel glanced back at his book, it was only for a moment. “Children,” he murmured. “I’ve seen how you are with them, how they are with you. First with Noah, but ever since then…”

Crowley swallowed, tongue flickering out to taste the air between them. Even the smallest peek at the angel's essence was a riot of overlapping emotions, vying for attention and aimed at too many things to guess at. It was... 

Words. Give him words.

“How am I?” he asked (begged?).

“Gentle,” Aziraphale answered promptly. “Brusque. Jocular.” (As if anyone used the word “jocular” anymore. For Hell’s sake, angel.) “Caring. Patient. Don’t snort at me, Crowley.”

Crowley looked away. That this also leaned his cheek into Aziraphale’s hand was… fuck, the angel said he wasn’t allowed to lie… not quite coincidental. “M’not… Don’t think I’m as patient as you think, Aziraphale.”

Demons weren't patient. It wasn't patience if there was no choice.

“Maybe. You love them.”

Crowley froze. His breath stuck mid-inhale and turned to ice. Mid-pump, his blood coagulated and ricocheted in hail-stones. Never, not once in his existence, had anyone ever accused him of that—of _love_. The suddenness it now was more than a little nauseating.

Aziraphale, calm as a sociopath, twinkled. “Response?”

How was he supposed to respond to _that_? Crowley shook his head, horrified and warmed (thawed) to witness delight dawn across Aziraphale’s face.

“I watched you with Warlock, Crowley. I’m not blind.”

Not blind. Crowley’d given up on figuring out what the angel did or didn’t see. He didn’t know why Crowley’d been angry during the whole wing debacle, but he’d seen… what _had_ he seen?... Crowley with Warlock.

Aziraphale’s head tilted to one side. “Would you like a list of all the things I think you love, Crowley?”

He would, in all honesty, like to be shot first. The pain might distract from this entire conversation. “F’I say no?”

“Then I’ll go back to Noah," replied the angel, like he was talking about doing the washing up and not threatening to read the highs and lows (however one wanted to define those) of Crowley's existence to a captive audience, "and work my way through four thousand more years of my observations of you. It comes to the same thing, but the list is shorter.”

It…

What?

 _It comes to the same thing_.

Crowley stared, gawp-mouthed and gasping for anything that didn’t taste of the truth radiating from every hidden glimmer of the angel’s being.

“Stars,” the angel began and tossed his little book from existence again. Now empty, his other hand filled itself with Crowley’s unclaimed cheek, bracketing him in, hand and foot and body and chair. Crowley’s own hands, worn tight into the carvings of the throne, loosened and flung themselves—in protest, in prayer, in panic—at Aziraphale and clenched into his coat-sleeves and forearms.

“Stars. Children. Saint Anthony.” (Crowley huffed. Aziraphale’s thumbs smoothed over his cheekbones.) Shakespeare. Hamlet, specifically.”

“Oi!”

Aziraphale’s grip on his face tightened briefly. “Did you really think I didn’t _recognize_ you in his monologues, Crowley? Your sleeping and your discontent and your hopeless rage and longing and _grief_?”

“Honestly?” the demon croaked. “Yes.”

The angel’s face crumpled. “I lived through the 14th century too,” he murmured, and Crowley’s heart fragmented. Again.

“I know,” he… was there even a word to describe those two syllables? They were words. He said them. He said them, and he forced one hand to release the angel’s coat and (soft and cold and trembling like dirt-cling on a mushroom) mold against his cheek. “I know, Aziraphale.”

For a moment.

For a time.

For a time, they sat and breathed. They breathed in air and the scent (the blinding radiance and darkness) of each other’s presence and the silent, inevitable passing of distinct and solitary seconds.

“How did you know?” Crowley asked, finally.

For six thousand years and more, before time was measured by births and deaths and the turning seasons, no one had known. No one knew. No one ever knew. No one ever suspected. No one but the other demons and that… wasn’t a conversation they had. Ever.

Aziraphale grimaced. “The plague," he answered. "The Inquisition." The lightning-fire of his gaze cooled to something almost (almost) bearable while his body curled apologetically into Crowley’s palm on his face.

“The…”

“Nothing,” the angel stated—like fact, like truth, like a commandment—“Nothing and no one could grieve like that without love, Crowley.”

Crowley wanted to scream. He wanted to loose a lifetime’s rage and fear and loneliness into the angel’s face. He _could_ loose that. It was tempting. Blessed fucking Heaven, it was tempting. At least that could surmount his prison. At least _that_ would be sure to hit its mark.

Unlike everything else that was bottled and pressurized and seething under his skin.

“I’ve seen you walk through wars and plagues and genocides, Crowley. I saw you at Golgotha. I saw you...”

Crowley twitched. He would just as soon not talk about _that_ , if it was all the same to the angel. “What else? What else do you think I…” He stopped and swallowed around the word stuck in his throat.

“Books.”

Of all the possible responses...

Crowley's laughter had him clinging to the angel again, just to stay upright in his throne. “Heaven, Aziraphale,” he spluttered.

The angel twinkled again. “Books. Words. _Knowledge_. Stories. Galileo.”

“He liked m’stars," Crowely mumbled, dazed and vaguely sulky. "He logicked at them. He had _sense_.”

“Indeed,” agreed Aziraphale, as easily and happily as a blown leaf. “Your Bentley. Music. Expensive clothes. Good wine. Laughter.” He turned his face suddenly and nuzzled into the demon's palm—so suddenly that Crowley didn’t have time to adjust, shock-slow from hearing his existence and secrets stripped bare by the only being in the universe who might (maybe) be trusted with such guarded, discarded fruits, the only one who might (maybe) care. “You would never be _nice_ ,” Aziraphale said, lips brushing callouses from the Bentley’s wheel, “but you love to _care_.”

Crowley's head (snake, remember?) tilted, confused and aghast. “What?”

“My wings.”

“Y’didn’t like it?” Okay, it was one thing to forbid Crowley to lie. It was another thing entirely for the _angel_ to sit there and pretend like he hadn’t loved (that bloody word again) every sodding second of it.

Aziraphale snorted and looked back down at him. “Don’t be absurd. It was wonderful. _You_ were wonderful. You were not, however, particularly nice.”

Oh.

Well.

Crowley could grant him that and did so with a small shrug.

The angel nodded in return. “Me,” he said.

Crowley hissed. He couldn’t help it. Who knew that everything he’d longed for and feared for millennia (and _known_ since he stood in a burning bookshop and felt his world crumbling, drowning, swallowed up in something worse than hellfire and holy water combined) could be summed up in two letters and a single syllable (and a familiar sicksweet scent of uncertainty). “Tell the whole world, why don’t you?” he grumbled (and stopped breathing and shut his eyes to soften the blow of the invisible explosion of wonder in front of him).

“I might. Would you let me?"

“Would you?”

“Uriel already thinks we’re boyfriends.”

His eyes snapped open again. “Uriel’s an ass and I won’t miss next time.”

Aziraphale tutted fondly.

He’d had everything _else_ ripped away and handed carefully back to him in this conversation. He might as well offer this too. And yes, he could see the engulfing floods of Aziraphale’s love, but…

“Do you?” Crowley asked.

_Do you love me? Do you? Can you?_

“Yes.”

And there it was. Trust the angel (always? since Rome? since the Arrangement? since Warlock and the beginning of everything that didn't end with Adam?)—trust the angel to say something that outrageous, that monstrous, so simply and calmly. Aziraphale could dither for centuries, but once he made up his mind there was no point in arguing with him.

Not that Crowley wanted to. Not this time.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

He nodded—acceptance and reciprocation, if reciprocation was a thing that he could do—into the angel’s hands and watched Aziraphale's entire face transform with an unsteady curl of his lips and with long-settled joylines sprouting from his eyes. He watched (felt) Aziraphale pull in a long breath. He watched (felt) him gently let it go again.

He felt watched. He felt seen.

Aziraphale didn’t, couldn’t, feel his love. That was a door long closed, a lock turned, a key lost.

He didn’t feel Crowley’s love.

What he _knew_ , however…

The demon sucked in a deep breath of his own. "I'm going to hug you,” he announced.

Aziraphale blinked, his eyes human-soft and human-blue again. “Are you?”

“Yup.”

“I see.” Aziraphale's hands fell away, hesitant and uncertain, into his lap, as the angel watched Crowley stand and step closer. (The throne pushed itself out of the way again.) “Crowley?”

“Aziraphale?”

“Would you… may I?” The hands rose again and hovered, not touching.

Did the angel have any idea of the mercy he’d granted Crowley by leaving him his glasses through this conversation? By allowing that one, fragile, slender barrier and haven?

Crowley bent his head into Aziraphale’s touch and let the angel lift the sunglasses away.

“Thank you.”

“’Course,” Crowley responded, summoning his nonchalance and discovering that it was true. His arms coiled into the angel’s sturdy warmth and tightened. The angel’s arms fitted around him like they’d been bespoke for the task. “Any time, angel.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over [here](https://istezada.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, if you feel the need to rant about the oddities and quirks of a 6,000 year old relationship. (I will also accept your favorite lines. _I_ have favorite lines, and it's always interesting to see if other people like them too.)


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